RSSCTO of the United States
© StuSeeger
So now that Obama has been elected the inevitable speculation has begun around his potential cabinet appointments. This happens with every president-elect, of course, but this time around, CIOs have some skin in the game: a part of Obama's platform was the promise to appoint a cabinet-level official as Chief Technology Officer of the United States.
Information Technology obviously already plays a significant role in government, and federal agencies major and minor already have CIOs and CTOs who serve admirably or poorly, just as their private sector counterparts do. The cabinet role has been bandied about as a proposed solution to a number of different problems; to help the country focus on the creation of technology sector jobs, to unify notoriously disconnected government information systems, to find ways to use technology to broaden public oversight and make government processes more visible to the average citizen. Heavy hitters such as Eric Schmidt, Steve Ballmer, and Vint Cerf have been mentioned (although it's unlikely that either Ballmer or Schmidt would see much appeal in the role over their existing positions helming the battling juggernauts of Microsoft and Google, respectively).
It is difficult for me to see a clear role for a CTO/CIO in the cabinet, however. While all the reasons mentioned for the creation of the role are admirable, and no doubt would be furthered by the clout that a cabinet position would bring, they just seem a little random to me. And although there are probably some successes to be had in unifying and systematizing government IT, it strikes me that this may be one of those situations where the goals of government and the processes for achieving them ought not duplicate their private counterparts, and would not be well-served by doing so. With the sheer breadth of missions and number of agencies, I can't help but wonder if department level control would continue to be more appropriate. I could see the wrong person creating a vast, Dilbert-like bureaucracy where now there are only medium sized Dilbert-like bureaucracies which have in large part come to their own equilibrium of inefficiency and would have to start all over again with government-wide standards.
I am curious about how others see this, though. After all, Obama's campaign did realize tremendous advantages from a well-run IT operation, and there is considerable appeal to the thought of him leveraging similar advantages in distributed (no, not distributive) governance. So, tell me: what do you see as the role of national CTO, and who would you choose for it?
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